Sunday, December 31, 2017

As it has for the last four decades on New Year's Eve, Lake Superior State University, which I visited eight years ago, released its list of "banned words." Along with such fatuous words such as "impactful" and "onboarding/offboarding,." included are "covfefe," which was, I think, a typo, as well as "fake news."

Okay, fair enough. Since LSSU is banning "fake news" I have come up with a replacement for it--and it is "CNN!"

A former city tow truck driver has been sentenced to nine years in prison for soliciting bribes from downtown sightseers whose cars he;d towed.

Cook County Circuit Court Judge Lawrence Flood sentenced Lennie Perry Wednesday to nine years in the Illinois Department of Corrections followed by three years of supervised release, according to a statement from the Chicago Office of Inspector General. Perry was previously found guilty of two felony counts each of bribery and official misconduct.

In the late evening hours of Sept. 19, 2014, a driver who had parked near Columbus and Balbo returned from sightseeing to find that her vehicle had been towed, prosecutors said. She flagged down a nearby city tow truck and the driver, Perry, told her that her vehicle would be returned if she paid him $150.

When the victim told him she didn’t have the money, Perry directed her to his wife, Arica Reed-Perry, who was parked in a vehicle across the street, the OIG said. Reed-Perry drove the victim to an ATM then dropped her off at her vehicle after receiving the $150.

The victim then called the cops--who promptly arrested the tow-truck driver's wife. It was quickly learned that Perry pulled off the same scam twice before. Reed-Perry pleaded guilty--she received probation.

Mark Dice, a humorous but accurate critic of fake news outlets such as CNN, lists his ten biggest CNN failures of 2017. My favorite comes from Don "Black Hole" Lemon, who accused President Trump of "trying to ignite a civil war in this country."

Arborists are recommending that a dying magnolia tree on the White House grounds that was planted sometime around 1830 by Andrew Jackson--and which has been held-up by cables for over thirty years--be removed. Or if you prefer, chopped down.

A much better headline would have been, "First Lady accepts advice from experts that tree planted by Andrew Jackson be removed."

One of the devious tricks utilized by dishonest media outlets such as Newsweak is to use a biased headline--they know that readers, and I'm using that term in a very loose fashion--usually don't read the accompanying story. Although Pereira's piece appears to have gone through at least one extensive revision.

Included in the article is a photo of Ms. Trump with a disapproving face, as if she is Marie Antoinette sharpening her axe. Remember, the headline says "ordered."

Let them eat magnolia blossoms.

And the mainstream media can't understand why so many people despise them. The disingenuous media cannot bypass any opportunity to attack a president that they hate. Or his wife.

As for Pereira, she has a superb leftist résumé. She used to work for ThinkProgress, a left-wing chatterbox. StinkProgress is a project of the Center for American Progress--a far-left group.

The mainstream media and its feeder outlets are an incestuous cabal. There is so much swamp that needs to be drained. America needs an honest yet diligent media.

Newsweak is so bad that it has a "corrections" tab on the bottom of its homepage.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Roughly halfway between downtown Detroit and the exclave suburb of Highland Park is Northwest Goldberg neighborhood, which is almost always referred to as NW Goldberg.

To make any image larger just click on it.

There are so many beaten-own big old homes in Detroit that were probably once packed with screaming kids, kind of like the scene portrayed in the song "Our House" by Madness.

This one is covered by asphalt brick--on the left is the one of the most common trees in post-prosperity Detroit, a mulberry.

NW Goldberg is part of the original Detroit street grid that runs from southeast to northwest. According to Google Maps its boundaries are Grand Boulevard on the northwest, Grand River on the southwest, the Grand Trunk Railroad tracks on the southeast (lots of "Grand" going on here), and the Lodge Freeway on the northeast.

NW Goldberg's pride and joy is the Motown Museum on Grand Boulevard, which is housed in the original studios that produced so many hits in the 1960s when the label proudly declared itself "the Sound of Young America."

This photograph was taken in 2015.All others were snapped in mid-November of this year.

This burnt-out brick home reminds me of the type of farmhouse you'd find in Normandy after D-Day.

Two rundown American Foursquares. Note the "Detroit sidewalk" on the right.

From a Detroit sidewalk we move on to a Detroit street, formally 16th Street between Marquette and McGraw, where a crab apple tree rests. It sits there--and no one does anything.

Does anyone care?

Which is followed by a Detroit alley. As I noted in a post made last month, most alleyways in Detroit are impassable. Alley garbage pick-up ended there in the 1970s.

NW Goldberg's other claim to fame is King Solomon Baptist Church. Prior to the all-black congregation owning it the Tudor Revival structure at 14th and Marquette was the home of Temple Baptist Church--an all-white congregation. I covered the sometimes troubling yet fascinating story of these two churches two years ago. In 1963 Malcolm X gave one of his best-known speeches at King Solomon, his "Message to the Grass Roots." Was that address given here?

Or here, in the King Solomon Church Main Auditorium across the street? Records are unclear. As this building holds 5,000 people, I'm going with the latter.

The beautiful church building has been vacant for years.

Martin Luther King also spoke at King Solomon.

Abandoned or not, you don't see as many apartment buildings in Detroit compared to other large, or formerly large, cities. I suspect it's because Detroit grew rapidly in the early 20th century, when single-home ownership became more desirable and affordable.

Http, that is hypertext protocol, and the World Wide Web have bypassed this vacated classic gas station, save for a graffiti tagging.

Another forsaken home--and the ubiquitous-in-Detroit discarded tires on the front lawn.

Here's what you will find at 16th and McGraw--some interesting clapboard work.

Scenes of desolation such as this one are very common in Detroit. In 1940 the Motor City was America's fourth-largest city. Not it's in 23rd place.

Illegal dumping in Detroit just doesn't include tires and other man-made debris. Brush and yard waste also is indiscriminately disposed of.

Here's yet another Detroit home that you can just walk right into.

Metal thieves stripped much of the aluminum siding off of this home.

A fixed up version of this home will go for over $1 million in San Francisco. This one probably isn't worth $1,000 in the Motor City.

Because NW Goldberg is quite close to three freeways--the Lodge, Jeffries, and Edsel Ford, in my opinion it's future is bright. Hipsters and millennials have moved into Corktown, Boston-Edison, and Virginia Park. NW Goldberg could be next.

Guests of Marathon Pundit in Detroit stay at the luxurious Pink-Inn Motel.

Minutes after holding a news conference Thursday during which Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson offered up a public shaming of Facebook for not assisting a year-long investigation into “secret” pages that act as virtual flea markets for guns and drugs, the phone rang in the superintendent’s office.

It was folks from Facebook. Perhaps they saw the news conference; it was streamed live on Facebook.

Johnson’s parting words to the cameras were: “Facebook has a responsibility to the people that they serve to ensure that these types of things don’t go on, and quite frankly, they haven’t been very friendly to law enforcement to prevent these things, so maybe with you all’s help, they will become that.”

The phone call resulted in a commitment to hold a “high-level” meeting between the Chicago Police Department and Facebook shortly after the New Year, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

One of those snagged was a Chicago Public Schools physical education teacher.

Thursday, December 21, 2017

In his June 18 Huffington Post article titled "What Will It Take To Dump Trump?," Robert Kuttner, a university professor and a co-founder of the leftist American Prospect, called the president "sputtering mad."

And that's not all.

I don’t have a crystal ball. But given all of the items in play, I think the odds are that sometime between now and the end of 2017, a delegation of senior Republicans will pay a call on Trump and suggest that he either resign or face a formal removal process.

Trump does not seem to like his job. He could resign even without that pressure.

Wow. On the contrary, Trump seems to love his job. And he's not just giving speeches--the president is getting into the trenches and doing what is needed to get major legistlation passed such as his historic tax cut bill.

Now, true, there are ten more days left in 2017. But barring God calling the president home, Donald J. Trump will still be residing in the White House on New Year's Day and continuing to Make America Great Again.

Kuttner's Twitter feed is here. So far no retraction on his prediction.

On Fox News last night Howard Kurtz, a straight-up honest journalist, notes that the media is grudgingly coming around to admit that President Trump has collected a number of solid accomplishments, even though some folks don't care for them.

Trump has nominated and had confirmed a solid slate of conservative judges, the Islamic State is on the run, and of course the tax reform bill is on his desk awaiting his signature.

Sure, the media for the most part still hates the president, but he is, to use of Trump's favorite words, winning.

When I was born Illinois had 24 seats in the US House of Representatives. Now there are only 18. Now Illinois is one of the few states consistently losing population. Yesterday the US Census Bureau released its latest population figures--and among the findings is that Pennsylvania passed up the Prairie State, it is now America's sixth-most populous state. The more than thirty-years of tyranny of state House Speaker Michael Madigan, a Chicago Democrat, and his public-sector union pals, is reaching its inevitable end. Illinois is a rotting corpse for maggots like Madigan to feed on.

Election Data Services in a press release reports that Illinois will lose another seat after the 2020 congressional reapportionment--and it may end up being the only state losing two seats. Boss Madigan is a master gerrymanderer--he'll find a way to increase the number of Democrats in the Illinois delegation, even though the biggest population drops are in the lockstep Dem strongholds of Chicago, particularly the West and South Sides, and its inner suburbs.

Decline and fall.

According to the same source, only two states are expected to pick up more than two seats after 2020, Texas (3) and Florida (2). Both of them were won by Donald Trump last year.

Decades ago, as I wrote last month, real estate developers in Detroit built a wall to separate black and white neighborhoods near Eight Mile Road. Both sides of the wall are predominately African-American. The wall still stands, but parts of it are now painted with beautiful murals.

Meanwhile in goofy southern California there is a wall of trees on the edge of Tahquitz Creek Golf Course in Palm Springs. Apparently the trees were planted as a wall of sorts because on the other side of the trees is a black neighborhood.

Some people in Palm Springs says that makes the trees racist--I thought liberals liked trees?--and city officials plans to chop the trees down. The cost to taxpayers? $169,000. Tucker Carlson has more.

Wednesday, December 20, 2017

When I'm asked why I go into the worst neighborhoods of Chicago and its inner suburbs to take photographs of abandoned houses and factories, I reply that I'm doing so because I am preparing myself for Illinois' future.

Scratch that--the next time I venture out to do the same it'll be to document the present.

Illinois was just one of eight states in the nation to lose population between mid-2016 and mid-2017, with much of it due to people leaving for other states, according to new estimates published Wednesday by the federal government.

Illinois' population fell by 33,703 people to just over 12.8 million, according to the estimates. The loss caused it to slip behind Pennsylvania to the 6th most populous state in the nation.

More...

Illinois' population loss was the worst in the country on a numerical basis, and on a percentage basis it was second from the bottom, with only West Virginia faring worse.

Most of Illinois' population decline was due to a net loss of 114,779 people moving to other states.

Illinois is the most glaring example of the blue state model--which involves overly-generous salaries for public-sector union state employees who are given lavish pensions when they turn 50. The union bosses in turn contribute copious amounts of cash to the coffers of Democratic politicians. Everyone wins but Illinois taxpayers such as myself. Sure, Illinois has a Republican governor, but the ultimate power resides in Boss Michael Madigan. The Chicago Democrat has been state House speaker for an unprecedented 32 of the last 34 years--he's also chairman of the Illinois Democratic Party and his daughter is the state attorney general. Madigan draws the legislative maps for the General Assembly.

At the border--why didn't I leave

when I had the chance?

What is the saying about absolute power?

In an attempt to pay for these pension obligations, Madigan rammed through an override of Governor Bruce Rauner's veto of a massive income tax hike this summer.

It won’t be official until the House does its ­re-vote on Wednesday, but Senate passage of the tax-cut bill was the last real hurdle: Taxes are about to come down for all Americans except a few top earners in high-tax states.

And the business tax cuts should get the US economy roaring again. The Obama doldrums are really, truly over.

Hysterics from Democrats and most of the media have the public doubting it’s a win for the average Joe. But moderates will come around when they see their first paycheck of the new year, get a new job or a raise or see other benefits of the coming boom.

Some people might say that alleged comedian Rosie O'Donnell was just joking about her Twitter plea to senators Jeff Flake and Susan Collins to vote "No" on President Trump's tax reform bill in exchange for $2 million, but let's say someone in line at the baggage screening area at an airport yells "bomb" and then claims it was all a prank. That person is in a load of trouble.

“Bribery is the offer or acceptance of anything of value in exchange for influence on a government/public official or employee.” It is a federal felony. Just sayin’... pic.twitter.com/eS5tzh90uR

Two former Obama administration leftists, Walter Schaub and Eric Holder, were fanning the flames over rumors, most likely spread by other leftists, that President Donald J. Trump was planning to fire special prosecutor Robert Mueller.

There was talk of an uprising until a reporter asked the president if he planned to dismiss Mueller.

Why did disgraced FBI investigator and former member of Robert Mueller's investigation team Peter "Stroke" Strzok against on alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia need an "insurance policy" against the president?

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Peter Emerson, a Democratic Party strategist and a Huffington Post contributor, appeared on MSNBC's Morning Joe funhouse where he decried his party's messaging, which he likened to "an ad for a weekend furniture sale."

Failed Illinois governor Bruce Rauner released his top ten accomplishments for the year. They are as about as meaningful as the Cleveland Browns' Super Bowl plans. One of the Republican's deeds was vetoing Boss Michael Madigan's massive income tax hike, which was quickly overridden in the General Assembly as the Madigan 10 GOP traitors defied Rauner and sided with the Chicago Democrat.

Rauner faces a primary challenge in March. State Rep. Jeanne Ives (R-Wheaton) is a true conservative, let's make him fear the Ives of March.

And just as Americans didn't think of much about the carcinogens in the cigarettes they smoked for decades," Daily Wire editor Ben Shapiro says in the latest PragerU video, "most Americans don't think about the toxic politics in the television they watch."

Watch learn about how propaganda is being pumped into our homes hour and hour and day after day.

In its determination to secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle East-focused military and political organization into an international crime syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal activities.

Over the next eight years, agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics, buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

Sunday, December 17, 2017

Russian President Vladimir Putin called U.S. President Donald Trump Sunday to thank him for a CIA tip that helped thwart a series of bombings in St. Petersburg, the Kremlin said.

Putin expressed gratitude during the call for information provided by the CIA that allowed Russia's top domestic security agency to track down and arrest a group of suspects that was planning to bomb Kazan Cathedral and other crowded sites, the Kremlin said.

The Kremlin added that Putin asked Trump to convey gratitude to the CIA and assured him that Russian law enforcement agencies would hand over any information they get about potential terror threats against the United States, as they have done in the past.

The conversation was the second phone call between the two leaders since Thursday, when Trump thanked Putin for his remarks "acknowledging America's strong economic performance," according to the White House.

The Brighton Park Neighborhood Council and the Logan Square Neighborhood Association filed a lawsuit on Thursday against Cook County Assessor Joe Berrios, alleging that his office “systematically and illegally” shifts residential property tax burdens to minority and low-income homeowners.

The lawsuit comes after months of allegations against the assessor for undervaluing homes in majority-white and majority high-income neighborhoods

Homes in minority and low-income neighborhoods were allegedly overvalued to make up for the disparity.

“It is fundamentally unfair that families in this community are required to pay artificially inflated taxes for their homes and bear a disproportionate share of the tax burden in Cook County,” Patrick Brosnan, of Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, said in a statement.

Assessments in Crook County have been a racket for decades. Oh, did you know that Cook County has never had a Republican assessor? The racket works like this--connected property owners hire law firms with clout to appeal property taxes to get an even better deal from the assessor. According to analysis by ProPublica Illinois, the tiny law firm in which state Democratic Party chairman Michael Madigan is a partner filed more appeals than any other firm. In third place was a law firm where a powerful Chicago alderman, Ed Burke, is a partner.

Thursday, December 14, 2017

The Federal Communications Commission voted Thursday to repeal Obama-era net neutrality rules, a move that Republicans say would preserve a “free and open” Internet but has triggered protests from consumer groups, Internet companies and Democratic lawmakers.

The repeal passed on a 3-2, party-line vote.

“It is time for the Internet, once again, to be driven by engineers and entrepreneurs and consumers rather than lawyers, accountants and bureaucrats,” FCC Chairman Ajit Pai said in remarks before the vote.

Pai, a Republican, announced plans in November to eliminate the rules, calling for a “light-touch regulatory approach” to the Internet. A longtime opponent of the regulations, Pai had signaled plans to undo the rules since taking over as chairman of the FCC this year.

Judge Roy Moore isn't the only politician who has difficulty conceding a election loss. The day after now-disgraced Republican Bruce Rauner declared victory in the 2014 gubernatorial race, his inept Democratic opponent, Pat Quinn, finally admitted he lost. Rauner bested Quinn by five percentage points. But 2014 was quite an improvement over 1998 when Quinn waited five weeks to admit defeat in a 1998 primary race for lieutenant governor.

Also Quinn waited months to fulfill a promise to volunteer at a Wisconsin food bank after losing a bet with Gov. Scott Walker after the Green Bay Packers defeated the Chicago Bears in an NFC championship game.

Quinn, the archetypal political gadfly, is now running for attorney general. If he loses his primary race in March, how long will it take for him to concede?

Just like during the original Christmas, Jesus' birth will not be celebrated in Nazareth this year -- though this time, it's being blamed on President Trump.

Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has caused a backlash in the region, particularly among Muslims, and the reaction's reverberated to Nazareth, where the town's mayor, Ali Salam, announced Thursday that all planned Christmas events would be canceled.

Our identity and faith cannot be bargained,” Salam, a Muslim, said, according to 10 News. “[Trump’s] decision has taken away the joy of the holiday and we will cancel the festivities this year.”

Nazareth, the northern Israeli town which is home to a population made up mostly of Muslims and Christians, is scrapping all holiday plans, including a Christmas market and festival.

Time and time again CNN has been betrayed as an anti-President Trump shill for the Democratic Party and the institutional left. Do you want proof? Click here.

After Doug Jones was declared the winner in Tuesday's special election, President Trump issued a laudatory Tweet to the Democrat:

Congratulations to Doug Jones on a hard fought victory. The write-in votes played a very big factor, but a win is a win. The people of Alabama are great, and the Republicans will have another shot at this seat in a very short period of time. It never ends!

Tuesday, December 12, 2017

If Marathon Pundit is your sole support of information--and I can certainly understand if it is--then you need to know that Democrat Doug Jones, in a mild upset, narrowly defeated Judge Roy Moore, who has been accused of preying upon underage girls in the 1970s, in Tuesday's special election in Alabama.

But the biggest loser tonight isn't Moore, but Democratic senator Al Franken of Minnesota, who last week said he would resign his seat after being accused multiple times of sexually assaulting women. I believe that Franken was compelled to walk the plank by Senate minority leader Chuck Schumer and other top Dems as a way to seize the moral high ground once Moore was sworn into office.

Well Moore won't be going anywhere the US Capitol except as a tourist. So is it possible that Franken won't follow through on his resignation? Stuart Smalley still hasn't set a date for his departure.

The most effective way for the media to have refuted Donald Trump’s 24/7 accusations of "fake news" would have been to publish disinterested, factually based accounts of his presidency. The Trump record should have been set straight through logic and evidence.

So one would think after a year of disseminating fake news aimed at Donald Trump (Melania Trump was leaving the White House; Donald Trump had removed the bust of Martin Luther King, Jr. from the West Wing; Trump planned to send troops into Mexico, etc.) that Washington and New York journalists would be especially scrupulous in their reporting to avoid substantiating one of Trump’s favorite refrains.

Instead, either blinded by real hatred or hyper-partisanship or both, much of the media has redoubled their reporting of rumor and fictions as facts—at least if they empower preconceived and useful bias against Trump. But after the year-long tit-for-tat with the president, the media has earned less public support in polls than has the president. It is the age-old nature of politicians of every stripe to exaggerate and mislead, but the duty of journalists to keep them honest—not to trump their yarns.

Friday, December 08, 2017

New York Times columnist David Brooks, a phony conservative, is the in-house Republican at the Old Gray Lady. In his latest column, Brooks claims that "the GOP is rotting." Left out of his analysis is the historic gains the GOP has made since 2010 in governorships, the number of seats it holds in Congress, and since January, a Republican lives in the White House.

Mark Steyn and Tucker Carlson discuss the family of former US Rep John Conyers Jr--the dean of the House until this week. Conyers has been accused multiple times of sexual assaulting women. He wants his son, John III, to replace him. The younger Conyers, however, was arrested earlier this year for allegedly stabbing and body slamming his girlfriend--but he has not been prosecuted.

"These are very strange people," Steyn says.

Time constraints may have figured in, as Steyn didn't get the chance to talk about the older Conyers' ex-wife, Monica, the former president pro tempore of the Detroit City Council. She served a prison term for bribery.

Thursday, December 07, 2017

If President Donald J. Trump and a Nazi, he's a failure. This week, in a move that Israel is hailing, Trump announced that we are moving our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The president's daughter, Ivanka, converted to Judaism. Her children--Trump's grandchildren--are being raised as Jews.

But Trump is still Hitler in the mind of leftists, such as Barack Obama.

Still, the U.S. has survived tough times before and will again, he noted, particularly mentioning the days of communist fighter Joseph McCarthy and former President Richard Nixon. But one reason the country survived is because it had a free press to ask questions, Obama added. Though he has problems with the media just like Trump has had, "what I understood was the principle that the free press was vital."

The danger is "grow(ing) complacent," Obama said. "We have to tend to this garden of democracy or else things could fall apart quickly."

That's what happened in Germany in the 1930s, which despite the democracy of the Weimar Republic and centuries of high-level cultural and scientific achievements, Adolph [sic] Hitler rose to dominate, Obama noted. "Sixty million people died. . . .So, you've got to pay attention. And vote."

A man and a woman from out of town, both 27, were using a GPS device that took them to Lower Wacker Drive near North Columbus Drive around 1:50 a.m. Police said that's when they were approached by three people - one of whom had a knife.

The suspects stole their belongings, which included a $12,000 wedding ring, a $3,000 suitcase purse, a $2,000 MacBook Air, a $300 suitcase and a $150 iPad mini, and took off running. Neither victim was hurt during the robbery.

Often I've spoke of the need of the League of Shadows--from Batman Begins--to put Chicago right. Coincidentally, Lower Wacker Drive figures prominently in two memorable scenes from the first two Christian Bale Batman films--'Nice coat' and the Joker's bazooka attack on Harvey Dent.

A body was found in a clothing donation box that had caught fire Thursday morning in the Uptown neighborhood on the North Side.

Firefighters were called to the 1500 block of West Wilson Avenue around 7:15 a.m., to respond to a clothing donation box on fire. After the fire was out, firefighters found a body inside the box, police said.

Chicago's downtown is generally safe. As for Uptown. Yes, it's worse, particularly along Wilson, but it's no Englewood.

Decline and fall.

UPDATE December 8:

NBC 5 is reporting that the tourists made the whole thing up. They may be facing charges for filing a false police report.

US Sen. Al Franken (D-MN), under fire after being accused multiple times of sexual assault, announced on the Senate floor this morning that he would be resigning 'in the coming weeks.' Why not now? After all, the disgraced John Conyers (D-MI), made his departure an immediate one.

In his speech, Franken attacked President Donald J. Trump for his reckless comments about women. Fine. But when voters headed to the polls last year they knew about Trump's loose talk--which was not the case with Franken's alleged assaults. And the latest accusation comes from 2009 and it allegedly took place at a party celebrating Barack Obama's inauguration held by the leftist group Media Matters, at a time the results of the disputed election between Franken and his Republican opponent was still unknown.

The Cook County Assessor is Joseph Berrios, the chairman of the Chicago Machine, better known as the Cook County Regular Democratic. There has never been a Republican assessor.

What does the assessor do? He determines the value of property, thus setting the price to be paid in taxes. The office of the Cook County Assessor has always been a cash cow for the Democrats. Businesses, wealthy individuals, and property tax attorneys seeking favors contribute generously to the assessor's campaign fund and that of the Machine.

Problica, in a wonky but essential read, explains how bad it is in Crook County.From its report:

First-pass values represent the starting point of the assessment process. They are supposed to be the assessor’s best estimate of what properties would fetch in the open market.

More...

The analysis shows a large percentage of first-pass reassessments under Berrios remained the same over multiple reassessment periods. For example, 51 percent of the approximately 40,000 PINs in the analysis had the same first-pass value for the 2012 reassessment as the 2009 reassessment. For the 2015 reassessment, 39 percent of first-pass values were identical to the 2012 reassessment. Twenty-three percent of first-pass values were the same for all three reassessment periods.

By comparison, just 1 percent of first-pass values for the 2003, 2006 and 2009 reassessments conducted under Houlihan stayed the same from one reassessment to the next.

In cases when the first-pass values didn’t change, many of the property owners filed appeals and won reductions that lowered their tax bill – only to see the value snap right back to the same first-pass value during the next reassessment.

Hmm...is Berrios seeking more favors?

Of course there is a Boss Michael Madigan tie-in. Madigan has been speaker of the state House for an unprecedented 32 of the last 34 years. He's been chairman of the state Democratic Party for twenty years. Reuters says he is 'the man behind the fiscal fiasco in Illinois.'

What about Madigan?

Illinois House Speaker Michael Madigan’s six-member law firm has filed appeals on nearly $8.6 billion in commercial and industrial assessed value since Berrios took office. That is the highest of any firm in the analysis. During that time, Madigan & Getzendanner won reductions totaling 20 percent of that value, or more than $1.7 billion.

Sen. Al Franken’s support among his fellow Democrats appeared to collapse Wednesday as a group of female Democratic senators called upon him to resign amid sexual misconduct allegations. His office said he would make an announcement Thursday, but did not specify the subject.

“I’m shocked and appalled by Sen. Franken’s behavior,” Murray said. “It’s clear to me that this has been a deeply harmful, persistent problem and a clear pattern over a long period of time. It’s time for him to step aside.”

Gillibrand said “it would be better for our country if he sent a clear message that any kind of mistreatment of women in our society isn’t acceptable by stepping aside to let someone else serve.”

As each day passes it becomes abundantly clear that the investigation into so-called collusion between Donald J. Trump and Russia is 'the Swamp' striking back at the president and the tens of millions of Americans who voted for him in an attempt to nullify an election.

A top prosecutor who is now a deputy for Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s Russia probe praised outgoing acting Attorney General Sally Yates after she was fired in January by President Trump for refusing to defend his controversial travel ban.

The email, obtained by Judicial Watch through a federal lawsuit, shows that on the night of Jan. 30, Andrew Weissmann wrote to Yates under the subject line, “I am so proud.” He continued, “And in awe. Thank you so much. All my deepest respects.”

The disclosure follows confirmation that another Mueller investigator, FBI official Peter Strzok, was fired over the summer after allegedly sending anti-Trump texts to an FBI lawyer with whom he was romantically involved.

A former top counterintelligence expert at the FBI, now at the center of a political uproar for exchanging private messages that appeared to mock President Donald Trump, changed a key phrase in former FBI Director James Comey's description of how former secretary of state Hillary Clinton handled classified information, according to US officials familiar with the matter.

Electronic records show Peter Strzok, who led the investigation of Hillary Clinton's private email server as the No. 2 official in the counterintelligence division, changed Comey's earlier draft language describing Clinton's actions as "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless," the sources said. The drafting process was a team effort, CNN is told, with a handful of people reviewing the language as edits were made, according to another US official familiar with the matter.

The shift from "grossly negligent" to "extremely careless," which may appear pedestrian at first glance, reflected a decision by the FBI that could have had potentially significant legal implications, as the federal law governing the mishandling of classified material establishes criminal penalties for "gross negligence."

President Trump will announce the U.S. recognizes Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, but will sign a waiver delaying the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to there, senior administration officials said Tuesday.

Trump will make the announcement on Wednesday, in a speech that will be closely watched by other world leaders who fear the move will undermine peace negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians and spark protests across the Middle East.

In an effort to make good on a campaign promise, Trump will direct the State Department to begin the process of moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.

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The second day of the Chicago Climate Charter meetings are taking place on the city's Near North Side as I write this entry. As if on cue, temperatures have dropped from a balmy 65 degrees of Monday to the low 30s.

The summit is in response the President Trump's withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, which is an economic attack on the American economy.

Former President Obama, who lives in Washington now, will speak later today. I hope he brought a winter coat.

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